The October Activity night was Using Metal Leafing in your Painting with Gaye Pereira-Jackson. Please see the wonderful write up by Debbie Kavanagh taken from the November edition of the Pelican's Palette.
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Two of our members Kristina Love and Kathryn Price have provided a write up of this wonderful workshop - please enjoy their pieces below and some photos of the work produced in the workshops by Kristina Love, Kathryn Price, Judith Jones and Gaye Pereira-Jackson. There is also a screen shot of Hans work showing his use of anatomy as described in both pieces. Online Life Drawing Workshop with Hans Van Weerd (Friday 22 October) - By Kristina Love: Once again, HBAS managed to provide a scheduled workshop to its members during Covid lockdown by successfully using Zoom to run a (not quite) weekend workshop. Managing the complexities of online technologies, Hans Van Weerd (known to some of us from his inaugural ‘Dynamic Drawing in Mixed Media’ classes on Wednesdays) guided us through a series of nicely structured and well-paced life drawing exercises. His very professional model Tijana had set up a beautifully lit backdrop and maintained some challenging poses for us over the course of a full day. With each pose, Hans firstly demonstrated key structural features of the human form, giving us just enough anatomical information to help us map out our shapes. Using charcoal, ink and a range of other mediums, he sketched each pose and we followed suit, being given 5 minutes for earlier poses, building up to 10 and later 15 minutes as the poses became more complex. We learnt to be speedy, embrace our ‘mistakes’ and see our drawings as ‘pentimento’, works which preserve the traces of all our marks. The time limits freed us up to be loose and avoid overworking our sketches. We certainly all felt comfortable and trusting of each other to show our work, have it critiqued, and learn from each others’ presentations. We were encouraged by comments such as “Nice line work”, “Great volume in the form”, even “Nice clavicles”!. And we were extended by advice such as “Check your proportions” and “Work more on the facial features when you have more time”. With Hans’ guidance, we all managed to produce more or less convincing representations in charcoal, pencil, ink or other preferred media. It was fascinating to see the variety of interpretations of each pose, as we each brought our unique observations, experiences and styles to our renderings. Our final task was to put together a series of short poses into an animated sequence, challenging our capacity to represent each form authentically, arrange these into a coherent composition and infuse the whole with energy and dynamism. It was terrific to see what we could all do under pressure, after such nicely scaffolded tuition. The pace kept us on our toes, and by 3.30, having concentrated since 10 that morning, we were proudly exhausted by a day of great learning. Despite not being able to work face to face, we benefited from some unexpected advantages of using the Zoom technology, well handled by Hans and Tijana. We could all see the model clearly online and simultaneously watch Hans’ demonstrations in close up. We also didn’t need to lug our equipment into and out of cars, conveniently being able to access our preferred materials in our own studios. We did of course miss seeing each other in person, but very much appreciated the opportunity to learn in such an engaging and personable way online. Thanks Hans for making this such a terrific learning experience for us all! Check out Hans’ web site and Instagram: Website: https://www.artonyourwall.com.au Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hansvanweerd/ Hans Van Weerd Life Drawing Workshop - By Kathryn Price It was on, then off, then on again, then moved to online but finally on Friday the 22nd of October Hans Life Drawing Workshop went ahead! I have been to a couple of life drawing classes before but always felt a bit unsure as to what to do and was never too happy with my results so I was looking forward to this tutored session and it didn't disappoint. Due to the session being online the life model Tijana wore nude coloured briefs and one shouldered crop. She did a wonderful job with lighting and props offering great contrast and ability to put our work into context. Hans structured the workshop with him demonstrating how he would approach the pose with wonderful explanation on the underlying anatomy and how this helps us with the positioning of figure in our work. We then were given the opportunity to sketch the same pose. After each pose we each took turns holding up our work so Hans could give us his thoughts and some ideas on how to further progress with the work. A wide range of poses were covered including standing facing forward, back, side, seated and reclining. For our last exercise Tijana held a series of four dynamic poses for 3 minutes each and we sketched these out on the same piece of paper. Hans showed us how you could expand on that process and create an interesting piece of work by adding shading around his figures with different tones for the background and the foreground. He encouraged us all to continue with our pieces after the workshop building on them and perhaps adding colour using pastels, watercolour or ink. After this workshop I now feel I could attend a life drawing session and get so much more out of it. I am looking forward to the covid rules easing more so I can put my new skills to the test! Saturday the 16th of October was the second session of the Seeing Our Home Urban Sketching Project. Please see below the write up of the event by Judith Jones as taken from the November edition of the Pelicans Palette.  |
